Hello all we are "in the pickle" as my polish friend would say.
We arrived in France and got started on the road to "importing our car". We have done the CT, and handed ALL documents into our Maries, however the UK car tax ran out yesterday and obviously we cannot get any more as all docs now with Marie and prefecture.
I am assuming with no road tax our uk car insurance is invalid so can we insure the car here without all the docs back from the officials? I am sure the documentation will arrives soon it's been in the systems for ages now but as these things always take a while here and we will need to make journeys I would like to keep on the right side of the law. Also I believe the car should be insured even if parked on the road and as we do not have a garage it is illegal even now.
What should we do? Can we speed things up this end by going to the prefecture or Maries?
Also to add to the fun my driving licence needs renewing should I re do my UK one or do a French one? We are hoping the move here is permanent so a French one sounds like a good idea but would that just be an extra bureaucratic nightmare I really do not need right now?
Better to go there in person; I would never send a signed blank cheque anywhere!
Thanks all. Just had all paperwork back including my cheque for 2.50€ with a note saying "ce ne sera jamais 2.50€". It says to send it all back with a blank cheque! Not doing that, Iwill have to go to Beziers and attend the prefecture instead of my Maries office I think!
The Mairie should not have the paperwork that long.
I would definitely follow up and explain that you need paperwork back to insure the car.
Don’t worry about UK tax, i don’t think it invalidates your insurance, more like the other way around - in Ireland we cannot tax the car without insurance, but have done it the other way around (we were in your situation).
We had begun the process of reregistering, and our agent insured the car (still with Irish plates) but we still had the log book at that time. The insurance was temp for a month and we just brought in the new carte grise when all was done. This was Aug this year.
Like Krister, we also went to prefecture and queued for an hour, and came away with new reg and temp paperwork. Easy peasy. It cost 100 euro as car is 2001 reg.
Go back to Mairie, then call into an insurance agency and enquire about temp ins (with view to continue it of course). We work with Aviva, great service from our local agents.
Good luck!
Registration process and paperwork delay? When I registered our car here in France 4 years ago, I waited 15 minutes for my turn at the counter at the prefecture, handed over the pile of documents, waited 10 minutes and then paid the fee (about 400 €) and that was it. I received the temporary carte grise right away, and the final one arrived in the mail a week later.
Of course, this is Cantal, so the queues are short. But even in the Paris region, 15 years ago, there was no delay except for 2 hours in the queue.
I would check your insurance policy to check the small print just in case there are weasel words in there that will allow them to avoid a claim in case of a prang. I have never insured a British car here so am not sure of the work involved.
As for the licence, there isn't anything now that forces you to get a French one if you have one issued in the EU unless you comit a serious offence when they will happily change it for you so they can deduct the points !